Abstract

Led by Adorno and Horkheimer’s understanding of the three conceptual orienteers - subject, reason and emancipation - this work attempts to sketch a status that they have attributed to the Enlightenment. Ulysses and Oedipus are here used not only in the way those two authors have done, not only to illustrate dialectical contradictions that this "project" falls into and is marked by, but also in a way that signalize possibilities of different interpretations that have relied upon them. Adorno and Horkheimer’s "to enlighten the enlightenment about itself" is thus displayed, extended and examined also in the fields of contemporary thought where they have, in different ways, inspired and provoked new generation of Critical theory, and on the other hand, the postmodern authors